NowhereMon:Why is it always a phone sex line? There must be an unbelievable number of those things that if you are off by one random digit on a legitimate call you almost always get connected to a sex chat line instead. And the next obvious question is who pays for that? Have THAT many people never heard of the internet? How does that industry sustain itself? Staffing must be a nightmare. There must be more phone sex workers today than there were telephone operators in the pre-computer age.

Phone sex lines are like domain squatters. They buy hundreds of 800 numbers dirt cheap that all redirect to the same service. I imagine quite a bit of their "new" customers are guys who misdial, find out what it is, then save the number and call back later.

I heard an estimate that a quarter of all 800 numbers redirect to phone sex lines.

NowhereMon:Why is it always a phone sex line? There must be an unbelievable number of those things that if you are off by one random digit on a legitimate call you almost always get connected to a sex chat line instead.

Yes and no. It reminded me of Chucky. In fact, it occurred to me that some store manager out there might have decided on a Child's Play theme (or a more general one that involved Chucky), or had a promotion, and so had some of these things whipped up. What I didn't recall was that the original had "good guys" on his shirt.

Lol...this has happened more than a couple of times this year. I'm starting to wonderjust how many phone sex numbers Rick Scott has on file that he keeps getting themmixed in with the public service numbers.

ZoeNekros:washington-babylon: ZoeNekros: I worked for the (now closed) west-coast electronics chain Good Guys, who had the wisdom to make their corporate number 800-229-4897, or 800 BAY GUYS (since the office was in the bay area). This gave us employees the opportunity to "accidentally" give out the wrong number to annoying customers, as 800 429-4897. Which, of course, was something entirely different...

/csb

How the fark did you stand working there at all? All the creepy dolls around the place would freak me the hell out.

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LOLWUT? So nutty. I've never seen such a thing--Not at my store, or any of the others in the area that I would occasionally go to for various reasons.

Hey now, cut the guy some slack. He basically disassembled and outsourced the Florida Department of Health, and they're still working on a few minor issues with public health communications. The citizens of Florida are grateful to be getting what they voted for.

My company has multiple toll free numbers. Each one is one digit away from a phone sex number. If you swap the (866) with the (888) you'll also get a phone sex number.

We're an ISP. One time a flyer was printed with the wrong number advertising our service versus satellite service. Thankfully, a very mindful employee, who up until that point had nothing to do with the process *cough* noticed the stack of print outs being packages for the post office mailer and brought it up. No less that four people had approved and edited the flyer and no one had noticed the phone sex.

I still get old ladies sometimes coming in who say "I called, but all I got was some tired sounding lady on the phone and I did not think that was right."

You're probably right but I wanted to add a pedantic clarification. Generally phone companies buy blocks of 800 numbers, so while Joe Schmoe Plumbing may have dropped a particular 800 number, it doesn't generally "expire" unless the actual phone company lets it go. TMYK

Even without giving out the wrong number, but saying "800 bay guys" rather than "800 229 4897", sometimes I'd have customers call me back complain about it being a gay sex line. I mean, I get that it's easy to mishear, but if you call an electronics store and hear a clerk as saying their corporate number is "800 gay guys", wouldn't you think that either you misheard or that they were just farking with you?

I worked for the (now closed) west-coast electronics chain Good Guys, who had the wisdom to make their corporate number 800-229-4897, or 800 BAY GUYS (since the office was in the bay area). This gave us employees the opportunity to "accidentally" give out the wrong number to annoying customers, as 800 429-4897. Which, of course, was something entirely different...

Operator: Sure, Honey, let me get comfortable first. Oh, this top is just too tight on me. Here, let me undo it. And while I'm at it, there goes the bra. Ahhhhh. Now, Sugar, what does Papa need?

Caller: I was wanting some info on meningitis.

Operator: Ooooh. You came to the right place. Meningitis is when a big erect bacteria slips real slowly between the folds of your skin. It keeps probing and thrusting until it works itself in real deep, way past the tip. Are you still with me, Honey?

Caller: [FAP FAP FAP FAP]

Operator: Oooooh. You sound like you've called a medical information hotline before. Now, Sugar, where were we? Oh yeah. Now I'm going to tell you about antibodies but I'm going to do it really slowly. And I have to take off these tiny little panties first...

Because there are companies that exist out there whose sole purpose is to camp, then repossess expired registries for 800 numbers and re-purpose them as re-directs to phone sex lines. We're talking within minutes of them falling out of registration here.

So, honestly I dunno that you can blame much on the guy who flubbed this. Given the preponderance of 800 numbers that redirect to phone sex lines, you could pick any 800 number out of a hat and your likelihood of drawing one that leads to a phone sex line is pretty high.

jspenguin:NowhereMon: Why is it always a phone sex line? There must be an unbelievable number of those things that if you are off by one random digit on a legitimate call you almost always get connected to a sex chat line instead. And the next obvious question is who pays for that? Have THAT many people never heard of the internet? How does that industry sustain itself? Staffing must be a nightmare. There must be more phone sex workers today than there were telephone operators in the pre-computer age.

Phone sex lines are like domain squatters. They buy hundreds of 800 numbers dirt cheap that all redirect to the same service. I imagine quite a bit of their "new" customers are guys who misdial, find out what it is, then save the number and call back later.

I heard an estimate that a quarter of all 800 numbers redirect to phone sex lines.

There has been stuff about this on fark. If I remember right the same company and its shells are responsible for nearly all of them. They buy every 1800 that expires.

Why is it always a phone sex line? There must be an unbelievable number of those things that if you are off by one random digit on a legitimate call you almost always get connected to a sex chat line instead. And the next obvious question is who pays for that? Have THAT many people never heard of the internet? How does that industry sustain itself? Staffing must be a nightmare. There must be more phone sex workers today than there were telephone operators in the pre-computer age.